Moldova – among the world's worst for software theft

A study conducted by Business Software Alliance (BSA) on the software piracy rate in the Central and Eastern Europe included Moldova for the first time, which has one of the highest piracy rate (94%), and is the second in the world after Armenia. The study shows that in the central and Eastern European countries, the piracy rate has dropped to 68%. The lowest piracy rate was registered in Czech Republic, 39%. In Hungary the piracy rate constituted 42%, in Slovakia – 45%, in Russia – 69%. In the Western Europe, the 36% rate generated losses of USD 11 bln. In France, the piracy rate (45%) generated losses of USD 2.7 bln. The USA has registered one of the lowest piracy rate, 21%, which led to losses worth MDL 7.5 bln last year. The software piracy rate in Romania dropped to 69%, however, the losses caused to the companies increased by USD 114 mln, because of the expansion of the software market in the country. In 2006, about 600 inspections were carried out to check for unauthorised software distribution, almost twice as much as in 2005. Also, a court in Romania decided to jail a street merchant of unauthorised CDs. Recently, the representatives of the BSA in Moldova, which is the Association of the most important software producers in the world, announced that the inspections of the police did not start yet. The campaign aims at verifying whether economic entities use licensed software. The campaign that started on 1 November 2006, after the company signed the protocol on the collaboration with BSA, Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Agency for Intellectual Property, will be continued, especially through media, as well as by verifying if the laws on the legality of using the software are observed by the large companies and users. The legislation provides three ways of punishing those who are illegally using software: civil, administrative and criminal liability. The first one includes that the owner of the rights can ask from the offender compensations up to MDL 500 thousand. The administrative responsibility includes a fine of 200-500 conventional units, as well as confiscating the counterfeited copies. The criminal liability includes fines from MDL 16 to 200 thousand and complementary sanctions as work for the benefit of the community, imprisonment for individuals, and fines for entities. The punishments will be decided by the judges.